


If you have ghosts

by deputyrook



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 05:52:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17595671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deputyrook/pseuds/deputyrook
Summary: After the world ends, Rook is haunted by the guilt that she killed Joseph’s family- and the heralds themselves. Joseph/Rook.





	If you have ghosts

It’s John that she sees first, which is surprising. Jacob had always gotten inside of her head, and Faith had been a woman who was half-ghost to begin with. But no, it’s John she sees first, sitting calmly at the end of her bed as she wakes blearily one night.

Or one morning. It’s hard to tell, so far underground. The silence of the bunker, the darkness of it, is deafening.

Rook doesn’t shout. Instead, it feels like all the wind has been knocked out of her lungs. As wide awake as if she’d been dunked into a lake of icy water, Rook scurries backward, until her back is pressed against the headboard of the small bed she sleeps in. She stares in shock as a grin spreads across John’s bruised face, and clamps a hand over her mouth so she doesn’t make a noise and wake Joseph, who sleeps in the next room over.

“I have to admit, Deputy,” John says, with a light chuckle, “It’s good to get the jump on you, for once.”

Rook’s mouth opens, and then closes. She clears her throat, and whispers, “You’re dead, John.”

John’s grin doesn’t fade as a runs a bloodied hand through his hair. Even in the dim light, Rook can see that he looks exactly as he had when he’d died, injured fatally by his plane crash. Rook had wanted to apprehend him. To arrest him. When she’d found him, though, not far from the crash site, John was already bleeding out.

Rook’s hands start to shake, and she squeezes her eyes shut, praying silently that John will be gone when she opens them again.

He’s still there when she does.

“That doesn’t matter,” John says with a wave of his hand. He looks so real, and Rook’s stomach feels like it drops through the centre of the Earth as he leans forward toward her. Nothing about him seems translucent, or spectral. He seems as though he’s right there with her, in the bunker, after the end of the world, in the flesh and blood.

“Of course it matters,” she whispers hoarsely, “You can’t be here. You need to leave.”

John raises an eyebrow at Rook. He appraises her slowly before answering. His movements are slow, languid, as though he has all the time in the world- and Rook supposes that he does. “I don’t have to go anywhere, dear. You should be nicer to me. After all, you  _killed_  me. I told you Joseph was right, didn’t I? But you didn’t care. Now, you’re here.” John tuts at her as if he’s speaking to a child, and Rook grimaces. “Joseph always was more patient and forgiving than me. I would have killed you. Or left you to die.”

Rook’s whole body is shaking now. She feels sick. Moving across the bed until he’s sitting directly in front of her, John places his hand on her neck, and Rook can  _feel_  it. She can feel as his fingers curl around the column of her throat, the way they squeeze, ever so slightly. But she can breathe just fine.

“But you did beat me to it,” John hums, dropping his hand. “I thought I would be angrier about it, you know. But I’m not that mad at you. I think death brings...perspective.”

“Is this some kind of guilt thing?” Rook asks mostly to herself, pulling the covers tight around her body, and shaking her head as this is the remnant of a bad dream, “You need to leave.”

“Do you feel guilty?” John shoots back. Rook looks down. He’s smiling again, and Rook can see blood on his lips.

“You  _should_.” John pauses a moment to cough. “We had a plan. We were ready to save everyone, and the one who tore it all down, the one who brought the end? That was you.” John jabs a finger at Rook’s chest, and she winces, though not from the feeling, “I feel sorry for you. Do you remember what my last words were?”

“‘May God have mercy on your soul,’” Rook says, and John looks pleased that she remembered. He nods.

“Joseph was right. He was right about so many things.” John says, and then he sighs. “I can’t fault you too much for not listening to him. I didn’t listen, either.”

Rook swallows. John seems to be contemplating something, lost in his own thoughts for a moment. Rook wonders if she’s the ghost, to him.

“Everything else, though. That, I can fault you for.” John’s voice turns dark, and Rook’s breath catches in her throat, “Wrath isn’t enough to describe the sins which you-”

“Who are you talking to, Audrey?”

Rook’s head whips to the doorway. Joseph stands in it, lean and relaxed, no sign of residual sleepiness from just having been awoke. His head cocks slightly to the side as he looks at Rook, who shivers and looks back to the space where John had been.

He’s gone.

“N... no one.” She answers, feeling sweat bead down her neck. “‘Must’ve been having a nightmare.”

Joseph watches her, and doesn’t speak. He stays silent for just a fraction too long, a second-long silence which says, _I have used the same excuse and I know you’re lying to me._  But he doesn’t press the issue. He walks into her room easily, lowers himself to the bed where John was seated, just moments ago. 

Joseph enters her space as though all things between them are shared- as if there is no  _her_  space, but there’s only _their_ space. And maybe between them, all things are shared now, in their little bunker at the end of the world.

He’d never had much of a regard for her personal space, though.

Joseph cards his fingers through her hair gently, but the look on his face is impassive. “Another one?” He asks. Rook nods, and he continues, “What about? Tell me of your terrors. Let me understand.”

“I-” Rook falters. “It was about John.”

“Ah.” Joseph’s words die in his throat, and he withdraws his hand. “What about John?”

“He-” Rooks eyes slide to the doorway, where John now leans across the frame. Joseph doesn’t follow her gaze, but keeps his eyes on hers, deadlocked. Rook swallows and looks back to Joseph. “Just about- Never mind. I can’t remember.”

It seems as though Joseph almost pushes it. As though for a moment, he considers digging for more information. But instead, he simply nods and stands back up, turning back toward the doorway to the room. He makes no indication that he sees John.

But he pauses, just for a second, before he passes through and exits the room.

 

* * *

 

Rook does her best to ignore John over the next two days. He’s thankfully not around all the time. Mostly at night, or when Joseph is off praying to himself, John will appear to her. He talks to her endlessly, speaks of sin and of cleansings and sometimes he’s angry and sometimes he’s sad, but mostly, Rook gathers that he’s awfully lonely.

After two days without sign of him, Rook nearly begins to relax, relieved, thinking that whatever daytime nightmare she’d been experiencing was ending. Being locked in the bunker with Joseph alone was bad enough.

But on the second night without seeing him, Rook wakes up to the smell of bliss flowers.

“Welcome to the bliss,” Faith’s voice says from her right, and Rook nearly groans. She sits up in bed, blinking away the recesses of sleep as she turns to see Faith, who stands in the corner of her room, picking petals off of a bliss flower.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Rook murmurs, shaking her head. Faith sighs, as though she was expecting Rook to say that.

“In another life, you know, I think we could have been good friends,” Faith says, and squinting at her in the dark, Rook can see that she’s drenched in water, dripping onto the concrete floor of the bunker. Like John, she appears as she had when she’d died to Rook, with a long gash across her cheek. At the very least, it doesn’t seem to bother her.

“Maybe,” Rook concedes in a small voice. Faith smiles at that, ruefully, and continues on.

“But you still won’t admit you were wrong. Why is that? You’ve seen The Father’s love, now. His forgiveness. After everything you did- to us, he forgives you.” Rook was almost certain she caught a note of bitterness in Faith’s tone. “He loves you. Do you realize that?”

Rook’s throat constricts, and for one strange moment, she’s scared she’s about to burst into tears. Up close now, without the fear and the confusion of bliss, Faith looks so young to her. Even worse, Rook can’t deny her words are convincing. There’s some truth to them, she knows. Joseph has been forgiving. He’s been patient. At times, he’s even been kind to her. Joseph should want to kill her.

 _No, no, no._  Rook wants to clap her hands over her ears like a child, to block out the words that are so confusing to her now. Joseph had known. John was right- Joseph had been right.

_So what does that make you?_

She feels a hand rest on her head, and looks up to see Faith. She pets Rook’s hair softly, and Rook, before thinking, leans into the touch.

“I know that you’re lost,” Faith says into her ear, and she smells light and airy and of sweet bliss blossoms, “I know you’re scared. I know you don’t want to admit that everything you did... was wrong. You won’t find love and acceptance and peace by turning your back on The Father. He is here, for you. He will _love_  you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Rook nods, numbly. She just wants this to stop- she wants some semblance of normalcy in her life. She wants to go home. She wants any of it-  _any_ of it to make  _some_  semblance of fucking  _sense._

As if she can hear her thoughts, Faith says, “It’ll all make sense if you talk to the Father. Stop turning away from him. Let him into your life, Rook. You’ll have to accept him sooner or later.”

Faith pulls Rook’s head to her stomach, and holds her there. Almost as quickly as the embrace had begun, it ends, and Faith has vanished into the air, leaving only the lingering scent of bliss in the air.

It takes a very long while for Rook to sleep, after that. Faith’s words stay rooted in her mind, repeat themselves over and over, and Rook can’t find any relief from them in the void of unconsciousness. She lies there, staring up at the ceiling of the bunker, in her twin sized military bed, imagining Joseph in the next room over.

Rook listens, but she doesn’t hear him praying. She doesn’t hear a sound, and for a terrified moment, Rook is sure Joseph will just be gone, and it’ll be just her, all alone in the bunker. Fear grips her, and before she can stop herself, she’s thrown off her covers and has darted across the hallway, throwing the door to Joseph’s room open.

He lies in his own bed, his back to her, covered only by a thin sheet. On hearing her enter, Joseph turns over, and for the first time, Rook sees him appear tired. It takes him a moment to blink awake, but when he does, his eyes widen curiously at the sight of her standing in the doorway.

“Why are you here?” He asks, and it’s so  _normal_  sounding, and she’s so relieved to see him, that Rook almost giggles. The sound dies in her throat as she realizes he expects an answer.

“I was- I was scared you wouldn’t be here.” She answers lamely, truthfully. Sitting up, Joseph beckons her over, and she sits on the edge of his bed.

“You were scared I’d leave you alone,” Joseph confirms, and his voice is so soft that Rook can feel tears pricking in her eyes. She feels so stupid. She feels so foolish. She feels-

Rook stands abruptly, just as Joseph’s hand touches her shoulder. Without another word, she goes back to her room, making some quick excuse to Joseph as she leaves. For the next several days, she barely speaks to him, still feeling embarrassed and stupid and of all things,  _ashamed_.

Faith doesn’t appear to her, doesn’t pop up and ramble on like John had for several days after his first appearance. But sometimes, within those next few days, Rook can feel her presence.

 

* * *

 

It’s night again, and she’s lying in bed again, but Rook hasn’t fallen asleep yet when she first hears the echoes of the music.

A sick laugh bubbles in her throat, and though her vision isn’t dimming red anymore, she still feels her heart rate spike. The music gets louder, and though she can’t see Jacob yet, she has a pretty good guess that a vision of him will follow. Before she can stop herself, Rook says aloud, nearly hysterically, “And here’s the ghost of Christmas future.”

“Something like that,” Jacob murmurs in reply. Though Rook’s reactions to seeing Faith and John had been strong, it’s nothing compared to the visceral fear and adrenaline that courses through her body when she sees Jacob. A reaction that he himself had trained into her.

He stands at the end of her bed, watching her the same way he had used to watch her while she had been caged. Jacob’s eyes are cold and calculating, and even though Rook can see a dark red splotch of blood seeping through his shirt at his side where she’d shot him, he seems amused to see her again.

“Congratulations on surviving the end of the world,” He says with a pleased sounding hum, “I knew you had it in you.”

“Well, it’s more thanks to Joseph, really,” Rook replies slowly, uncomfortably. She waits for Jacob to speak again, and when he doesn’t, points to the wound in his side. “Does that hurt?”

_Only you. Raise the weapon. Only you. Take the shot. Only you. One, two, three. Perfect. Only-_

She hadn’t even hesitated when she’d shot Jacob. She’d thought about that for a long time, afterward.

“Not really,” Jacob replies easily, “I don’t feel much of anything.” He looks Rook over. “So Joseph really was right. How about that? Good. The world needed a shake-up. And here you are, just like he’d said you’d be. Knew right from the beginning that it’d be you and him at the end of it.”

Rook balks at that. She pushes herself off the bed, and walks up to Jacob slowly. She wonders if he could hurt her like this. She wonders if part of her wants him to.

_Maybe. But he wouldn’t kill me. I can’t get off that easily. I need to suffer... right?_

“Why are you here?” She asks him, trying her best to glare at him, to not be intimidated. Jacob snorts, and walks around her, seemingly not the least bit convinced by her brave face.

“You tell me. You’re the one who brought me here,” He answers. Rook groans, and covers her face with her hands. She shakes her head, trying to understand.

“Come on,” Jacob chastises her, walking a circle around where she stands in the centre of the room, like a predator evaluating its prey, “You’re smarter than this, Rook. Think. Why’d you bring me here? Why do you need me?”

“I don’t need you!” She argues back, and before she realizes it, she’s shouting. “I don’t need you! I don’t need  _any_ of you! I  _don’t_  need John to come tell me how I fucked up, I  _don’t_  need Faith to come tell me how I need to open up, and I certainly don’t need  _you_  telling me that you’re, what, proud of me? That I need to  _think_ about it? I don’t- I didn’t  _mean_  to kill any of you! I didn’t want any of this! Stop  _haunting me!_ ”

With two hands, Rook turns to Jacob and shoves. Unmoving, he lets her palms collide with his chest, before he grips both of her wrists and shushes her. Immediately, Rook falls silent, shouts dying in her throat on a simple command.

Jacob leans in, until his face is inches from hers. Turning slightly, he speaks into her ear, his words breathy and barely audible.

“We’re not haunting you,” He laughs, “You just  _can’t let us go.”_

And then he’s simply gone, as though he’d never been there, and Rook is left in her empty room with her thoughts.

 

* * *

 

“Joseph. I want to talk to you.”

Joseph is always awake before Rook is. She has to wonder if he sleeps much, when she’d not once woken up to find him still asleep- save for the other night, when she’d come rushing into his room.

When she wakes up that morning, Joseph already curled up on the couch in room with the aquarium, writing in a journal. He looks up at Rook, with sudden laser-focused intensity, and Rook looks down at the floor to avert the burning pressure of his gaze.

When she gathers her courage to look back up at him, John and Faith and Jacob stand behind the couch, watching her too.

Rook lets out a cry, a pained noise, and takes a step back. Joseph’s brow furrows, and he sets his journal on the side table, marking his place with a bookmark before he stands and approaches Rook. He moves slowly, as though she’s a wounded animal, and when Rook doesn’t retreat, he places his hands on her shoulders.

“Speak,” He urges, rubbing his thumb in circles into her skin, and Rook runs her tongue across her bottom lip anxiously.

“I’m seeing... John and Jacob and Faith,” She admits, her eyes darting to where the three of them stand. It reminds her of when she’d first entered Hope’s County. She’d been so nervous, so unsure of herself. but so hopeful that things would work out okay. They’d entered that church and Joseph’s family had stood behind him as he’d preached, they’d framed him then as they do now, and she remembers how she’d looked at each of them in turn. She’d wondered about who they each were. How they’d ended up there.

“I know,” Joseph responds, and Rook is at a loss for words.

“Do you- have you seen them too?” She asks, after her brain catches up, and Joseph shakes his head grimly.

“I wish I did,” he answers, “But God has not granted me the sight. I know you see them- I know they’ve spoken to you. Even if the Voice hadn’t told me so, your... exclamations last night would have given you away.” Joseph leans into her-  _their_ \- space, ever so close. “You need to tell me something.”

“I’m sorry,” Rook says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Like the words have been trapped on her tongue for weeks and she just couldn’t taste them to figure out what they were. They fall from her lips so easily, and immediately, its as though a weight is lifted between them. “I’m so sorry, Joseph. I didn’t want to... hurt, or kill, any of them. I regret it.  _I regret it._ ”

Joseph watches her. Rook stares up into his gaze, searching for any kind of leniency, any kind of truth or relief. She searches for forgiveness, for hope, for the understanding she refused to afford him for so long.

And then he pulls her into a hug. Joseph smashes her against his chest, and wraps his arms around her shoulders tightly. Standing there, held by him, Rook feels calm for the first time since the fire had fallen from the sky and she’d driven through the apocalypse toward the bunker they now reside in. She presses her cheek against his chest and inhales, closing her eyes.

“It won’t be easy to walk a different path now,” Joseph tells her, “It won’t be easy for you to make up for this. You will have to work hard.” Rook nods against his skin, and doesn’t speak. She still doesn’t know about all of that, but the embrace is surprisingly comforting to her. She feels...  _better._

Joseph continues. “But this is monumental, Audrey. This stands in the face of your greatest sin- humility in the face of insurmountable  _Pride_. Opening your heart to me is your first true step toward finding yourself grace.” Pulling back, Joseph cups Rook’s face in his hands. He almost looks as though he might cry, and Rook feels as though she might, too.

“I...forgive you. I  _forgive_ you, my child. You see it now, don’t you?” He says, and Rook feels as though she can breathe again. She looks at him in near awe-  _How?_ But doesn’t speak it. Instead, she glances to where, behind the couch, the ghosts of Joseph’s family had stood.

They were gone now, and Rook doubts she’ll ever see them again.


End file.
